Fingering Smoky Thoughts
by GQSecondAct
Summary: Meg and Chris. Lover, she whispered in between breaths while he kissed her wet face. Naïveté was as ephemeral as time in Philadelphia.
1. FST 1

**Title: Fingering Smoky Thoughts**

**Author: GQSecondAct**

**Rating: PG **

**A/N: **Just a thought I had after last night's episode. I'll continue if you guys want me to! For now, it seems to be a one-parter piece. Please let me know what you think, because I love reviews. I'm not afraid of constructive criticism! It's definitely Meg and Chris. Enjoy! -molly-

It's been a while since he's cared. He stands in the bitter, chilled air that is Philadelphia on a Thursday night, an air that is heaving from the weight of nonessential intolerance and gray smoke and strangled voices, and wonders how anyone else cares. She is watching him now, just slightly bemused, and then the frosty winter orbs of her eyes drift down his arm and follow his hand as he wipes sticky white paint on a coarse brick wall.

"Are you kidding me?" he's saying when the words sort of melodiously tumble from her lips. They are crimson from the bitter, chilled Thursday night air, and she runs her tongue over them nervously. She asked him what happened to him. It sounded rude to her, and she is nervous now.

So then, he stops wiping the paintbrush on the coarse brick wall and says something, but she is too caught up in his face and the way the glow of a flashlight silhouettes his cheekbones. And there are his eyes, so brown that they're black in the purple air of a Thursday night, and he is standing there, so close yet so far away. And he's facing her.

She doesn't hear what he says, but that doesn't matter because she doesn't move when he kisses her. When a boy kisses her, she always feels clumsy and awkward, and this time is no different. She kicks the bucket of sticky white paint a little with her shoe, and it makes a round, echoing metallic noise on the invisible pavement – invisible in the purple air.

She can feel him sort of smirk against her lips, her crimson lips, as he catches them gently in his own. He didn't seem like the kind who would catch her lips gently. But he does, and it makes her feel less awkward so that she can concentrate on other things – like helping her hands make their way around his neck.

All he had been tasting before her was the crisp, biting air of war-torn Philadelphia, but now he can taste warm crimson safeness, bundled in a powder blue woolen coat and nervously wrapping its trembling arms around his neck. He realizes that he cares about being safe. For now, she is a nice safeness, and he likes powder blue wool and knowing that he can calm trembling arms.

She has flaxen hair that he finds he likes to twist around his thumbs and run his fingers through, raking for warmth. She runs her hands, Snow White hands with small pink nails, from his neck to his calloused shoulders. Even under the jacket, they feel rough and strong and she doesn't remember ever feeling a rough strongness in a boy.

He thinks they've been kissing for a very long time and he is afraid that if he doesn't pull away, she will – but he is the only one who knows that he's afraid. So he pulls away and makes the steadiest eye contact he can manage. He is slowly gripping the fact that it was a sole kiss and just maybe, she would not have minded if he kept gently following her lips as they followed his too, and kept steadying her trembling arms, and kept twining his fingers in her thick ringlets.

She looks like something from a fairytale book, staring back at him, trying to match the steady gaze he has. It is a gaze that is only steady because he has practiced it many nights leaning against the car in his driveway, a burning stub of a cigarette hanging from his lips and his eyes following a curtain as it shifted and twisted in the bitter, icy winds of a Philadelphia night.

Sometimes it was her curtain...not that she noticed.

Sometimes she did notice...not that he saw her noticing, of course.

The wind picks up, and she bites the bottom corner of her lip shyly, and he swears that he can almost see her cheeks flood with a rich scarlet - even in a night when everything is invisible but the silhouette of that determined face and a powder blue woolen coat lit up from a flashlight.

She can feel her cheeks turning red but thanks the purple air because he probably cannot see it. He breaks eye contact, and she does not know why, but silently thanks nobody in particular because she doesn't know how much longer she would have been able to stand there without pressing her lips back to his, asking for him to capture them gently.

She doesn't know he did it because he knew she was getting nervous.

They are painting again and the air is still bitter and icy and heaving with the weight of nonessential intolerance and gray smoke and strangled voices.

Both seem to notice it less. They can breathe a little freer now.

............

It is another icy purple Philadelphia night, but the exhaust pipe from the car is blowing hot, vaporous pillows of black smoke into the air. He can't tell the difference between the car smoke and the smoke emanating from the fierce and orange yet hardly visible embers on the tip of the white roll hanging between his teeth.

He is leaning on the car in his driveway and the lights in his house are still off. The back door is still locked. His mother is still occupied but even when he's alone, he won't show the building need to spontaneously combust with frustration and confusion and...something he things is akin to inferiority.

The white eyelet curtain on her window is winding itself in always undoable knots outside of her window and she is sitting crosslegged on her bed, facing the purple night air and her thoughts and her white reflection in the glass. She can see the curls of smoke and streams of silvery exhaust in the air below her window and she smiles a frown, because she knows that it is him but also why he is out there.

She thinks that he's afraid but she wouldn't dare say anything. So she wraps herself up in a pilly pink robe and slips down the stairs and walks out into the Friday night air of a Philadelphia October. He sees her but his head doesn't move – just his eyes. (Dark globes searching for her glassy aquamarine ones, ones that dance, but sadly. He doesn't know that she's figured out what he's really feeling when he stands here at night, smoking a cigarette and watching her curtains).

She leans against the rusting car next to him, and searches his face with those big wondering eyes. He has his suspicions about what she suspects about him – but he'll put that to bed and try his hand at twisting his thumbs in her thick hair again.

She likes when he plays with her curls, even though he's only done it once before. After all, you can only miss what you've had.

He twists his fingers in her hair but their lips never touch...now doesn't seem the right time for that. Both are happy, to themselves, that the other knows when is the time for such things. It seems juvenile, but he seems to think that she knows he is in a serious mood.

...Her hand entwined with his on a bitter, icy Philadelphia evening makes his desire to become an orange ember not quite as fervent, and lessens the sting of the utterly cold air that enters his lungs.

On a second thought, he thinks, the air entering his lungs is a little less cold as well.


	2. FST 2

**A/N: **I've been inspired. Apparently, this is the Meg/Chris "shipper fic," and I had no idea. I have really not read any American Dreams fanfiction (for any Milo Ventimiglia fans, you may know I am primarily a GG Lit), so I am sort of confused as to how nobody could write a Meg/Chris fanfiction! Anyway, I see a lot of potential in the characters and a lot of flaws that could be developed, and I am also a big fan of the time period. So there you have it. This is Chapter 2.

---California Dreamer--- You said you noticed some Jess in Chris. I can't not agree. I wrote him in a kind of rebelesque persona to show that the frame of his character is indeed purely unoriginal. And being a diehard Literati, I sort of added in some details that I often attribute to Jess. I think the fact that the same actor portrays both affects said characters...plus, who doesn't love Milo? Thanks a ton for your review.

To my other reviewers, thank you from the bottom of my heart. They were a nice pick-me-up :).

............

Roy Orbison really isn't his thing. Neither is this bustling, overtly patriotic town – a brown and white amalgam of tension and optimism. But he leans on the brick wall now in the late afternoon, and he can seen his shadow starting to creep out from behind the sun, so he knows that soon it will be dark. When it's dark, he won't be able to see all of this bitonal anxiety and all these national flags, and nobody will be able to see him.

You could stop on the sidewalk and look down that alley, and see him leaning against the brick wall, and all of a sudden find yourself trying to place him – you're sure it was a movie poster or among the rows of vinyls at the record store or maybe, you've seen him right where he is now, where he's most at home. (Leaning on a brick wall in the hours before the air becomes purple, smoking a cigarette and giving the impression of thought.)

She is walking in her blue wool coat, the double-breasted fabric pulled snug around her and the six blue buttons all fastened in the right places. She is walking quickly so that she doesn't give the impression that she wants to walk slowly and look for something or somebody. Today it is less icy (or maybe it isn't tonight yet) so her lips are not as red as they were that first night, but they are still soft and they look like they want to be captured today. Her hair, straw curls bouncing messily on the collar of the blue woolen coat, looks too perfect.

It misses his fingers, curling each lock around his thumb and raking through them.

She is pulling in air through her thinly parted lips so quickly that it tastes warmer than it actually is, and after she passes the alley and backs up, realizing that she passed him, it is suddenly very frigid. She thinks the air looks blue. She stands awkwardly, pressing her toes into the sidewalk, trying to thaw her lungs. They feel blue.

He sees her from the corner of his eye, through the lacy smokescreen that has swathed itself around his slender form. Eyes travel slowly up from the dirty ground, running up her peach legs and from the edge of the blue woolen coat to the collar, up her neck...they stop at the lips.

Her lips are wavering, and not crimson like the first night he noticed how much he liked them. And when he finally shifts his eyes again, he sees that hers, cobalt pools, are wet and warm and full. He wonders why the hell she always seems to find him when she is sad or confused or angry. But Roy Orbison was right – she is very, very pretty and her lips are soft and her hair looks too perfect today. The thumb curled around the cigarette is getting restless, weaker.

She comes and stands next to him, and he doesn't have to say anything for her to know he isn't ignoring her. He starts blowing his smoke the other way and stands up a little straighter and shoves a hand in his left pants pocket; that's how she knows. She likes the smell of smoke though...she quickly wonders if that is an insurgent thought reserved only for the minds of girls that used to feel awkward when they kissed boys, but then kissed certain types of boys and suddenly liked the smell of smoke and the feel of roughly strong shoulders and such things.

Then she feels guilty for not thinking about her brother and that's when a stifled, feeble sort of noise escapes her throat and pushes through her soft lips.

He stomps out the cigarette, grinding it into Philadelphia with the heel of his sneaker. She sighs. It's becoming harder to keep the tears from spilling out of her eyes. She is starting to forget why she came here, and moves to look at his face – then she sees his shadowy cheekbones and the ink eyes; she forgets to fight an impulse and he twitches slightly as she runs the tips of her small pink fingernails over his rough, strong shoulders.

"He's missing." It is more of a whisper than anything else, and she doesn't bother to really say it, so it's less than a whisper. But he has good hearing because he has practiced hearing the lock click open in the early hours of the morning when his mother is done being occupied.

He faces her, his hip balanced on the white between two brown bricks. "I'm sorry." It's a statement. He's not sure if he means it because he does not know her brother and he really doesn't know what it's like to be sorry for anything (he's done some bad things, but that doesn't make him sorry at all.) But when he studies the moody raindrop eyes and the notion that something other than the sheer glacial quality of the air has made her cheeks flood with a rosy tint again, he knows that he will probably mean it later.

He feels like he should say something else because she's still locking her eyes with his. He doesn't know that she is experiencing that feeling when it's cold in the clouds but also in your heart, ad something like a pair of rusty eyes or vanishing blue smoke triggers some antifreeze. It isn't helping much, but she doesn't want much help, really...just a little. This is enough. Just so she knows that it isn't altogether missing.

He's better at capturing than saying, so he captures – her lips, in particular. They're not as red but they are still as sweet and soft, if not more, and for a second he is eating a candy cigarette and wishing that smoke rings came out of the end.

"You let me wear his jacket." It, too, is more of a whisper than something said, and it's hollow but it's also full. She is a good oxymoron for him. She is thinking while he is capturing her lips that he is a good paradox for her.

She hears what he says and she is crying, so he is even more gentle. And he can do it, too – it feels like warm wind wrapping a feathery pillow around her lips and heat is emanating from her skin.

His thumbs find her hair and all is right with the world.

............

They are walking. The night is purple, but it is also late and the middle of the week. He has a hand in the pocket of the powder blue wool.

She can't breathe freely right now, so he breathes for her so she can watch him and know that somebody is doing better.

............

His mother is asleep on the couch. It isn't much of a couch; it is three gold-colored cushions with little orange flowers on some sort of iron frame or whatever a couch is made of. She is on her side, like she always sleeps on the couch, and a blue blanket is draped over her legs. She is bad at covering her occupations up, even though she knows he probably knows. He leans against the doorframe and notices that her blouse is still unbuttoned half of the way, and her silk camisole is showing.

The occupation left his wine glass on the coffee table. He wonders how many other homes in this overtly patriotic city have wine every other night of the week. His mother is going to play housewife (without a husband) in the morning and chastize nobody for leaving a ring on the coffee table.

He'll tell her that it was the wine glass.

He turns off the lamp and he can't see her lying there on the couch anymore, and that makes him feel better. He can pretend that the blackness is just a wall, and well, _nobody_ can walk through walls so he might as well not try to now.

Chris doesn't sleep; he sits on the front stoop and fingers a yellow thread on the end of his frayed jeans. When he runs his nails along the thread, it curls and it reminds him of her hair. Curly and yellow and easily accessable to the thumbs.

He thinks about how in his wildest dreams, he made her feel better today. And that her eyes are really nice, and that her cheeks flood with color because she feels embarrassed and that her lips change color but they're always very soft and patient.

He thinks about how as much as he hates to admit it, Roy Orbison was right. She is a very pretty woman.

...forgets to smoke tonight.

**A/N: **Feedback is loved, appreciated, and often times, reciprocated! ;) I am thinking of taking this fic in some new directions and showing what makes the characters who they are. Let me know what you think and how this is going. If you have any ideas, please let me know! Thanks for reading. I hope you like it.

-molly-


	3. FST 3

A/N: I am very glad that this is well-received. Thanks for the great reviews. I'm also incredibly relieved that I'm not the only one with a newfound obsession for Chris and Meg. Chreg. Whatever you want to call it. ;)

**Someone5** – I am ecstatically skipping a foot above the ground because you took the time to read and review this. You are so wonderful and such a good writer. Thank you!!!

**Everyone else who reviewed** – I love you more than lollipops. Trust me – that says a lot.

To all who saw last night's episode – this is VERY LOOSELY based upon the ending shots. Talk about a great one, huh?

............

Chris isn't well-acquainted with hugs. But he finds he rather likes them. It is snowing hard and there is no heat to be found, no matter how hard he looks. Then he stops looking because he knows he won't find anything more warm than the fragile, shaking body in his envelope arms.

He is angry at himself for yelling at her. He stood there, scowl masking his raw concern, barking things he doesn't remember. He does remember standing in a foggy, damp telephone booth in view of the Washington Monument early this morning when the snow was still preparing to fall.

Her flaxen ringlets are laced with snowflakes that dance and pool in the faint shape of a crown. Her shoulders are quivering and her face is buried in his red button-down, alligator tears soaking the cloth. But she is warm and flaxen and she is hiding in his arms instead of anybody else's...so he feels better. Not less apprehensive, but better.

The snow is falling, her hopes with it. He is praying that he'll steady her hopes for a little while.

Snow is beautiful this time of year and he can't find a word that matches snow. He can find a proper noun. Meg.

............

She slowly lifts her face off of his chest and looks at him. He adjusts his arms a little, loosens them, stretches them; he keeps staring into the purple darkness. He's beginning to think that purple suits Philadelphia well – not quite black, but not quite rose either. His face is a shadow, and his lips are thin and his breath is heavy on her left cheek. And she is pulled close to him, and her feet are touching his, and suddenly she wants to forget everything because thinking about it hurts too much. She wants to forget everything but the feel of his steady hands on her blue woolen back.

So she kisses him something fierce. It won't change anything that happened tonight (of course not) but she wants to forget horrifying things for a little while. She didn't know that she was keeping such pent-up fire in her mouth but Chris knew, he could see it in her irises, and now he knows that she's figured it out.

She is stronger than he thought and she has her fingers anchored tightly on his shoulders, and she is needing and wanting and begging and searching. Meg Pryor is one fluid motion and she is struggling to steady herself nonetheless, struck with the notion that she has grasped for something and it is there.

He runs his fingers along the powder blue wool. She is his new favorite scent and here in the falling snow, he breathes in her fresh clearness and sighs into her.

She pulls a hand from his shoulder and feels for the doorknob. In that split second he tries to remember if his mother and one of her occupations are inside. But now she has her hand around the little brass circle and he can't see her face so he knows there is no light inside.

They stumble. Chris has a hand on the blue wool of the small of her back and both of Meg's hands are back on his shoulders, squeezing them so tight that he can feel them bleeding heat into his skin. Her peach calves hit the back of the sofa and she pulls him down with her and then, she is lying there, a doll with golden hair and a flushed, tear-stained expression and those frosty orbs of color that are breaking him down, and he caves.

He caves, and they are like a broken record – he captures her lips gently, more gently than ever before (because she needs something gentle now) and begins to twirl his fingers in the loose strands of hair curving around her icy pink face. And her arms are wrapped around his neck, woolen ribbons, and she is pulling him close to her.

This is a good song, she thinks.

The snow is still falling. And she feels less shaken, and it is frightening, this warmness she feels when he is capturing her lips. And she doesn't want to stop holding him close but she knows that if she keeps letting him do this, there will be a new broken record for them to play and she will feel cold again.

She thinks of her brother. She thinks of Beth and how cold she must feel because her brother is not there anymore. And Chris is left capturing her cheek, rosy but cold.

"Meg." It is barely a noise but she hears him. She turns her head, bites her bottom lip, draining it of color. And she looks at him and his eyes scream _trust_. It is loud but it isn't demanding and she thinks she could just about drown in his eyes right now. They look...like the kind of eyes you can trust.

And the dim light is shadowing his cheekbones again and his shoulders are calloused and she is remembering how much she likes him when he is gently catching her lips with his own; how he makes her warm.

"We aren't gonna do anything," he says. It is firm, even, balanced – and she trusts him and she can't keep herself from pulling him to her.

He shifts and she buries herself in the hollow of his arm and he runs a hand along her side, and Meg Pryor is one fluid stationary, but still as strong.

She can't help but think how right this feels, even in the wake of what seems the worst time she can remember.

He can't help but think how much blue and curls and strong, motionless feelings are growing on him.

............

When she comes in it is late and she can still feel his fingers on her collarbone and running through her gold bangs. When she goes to sleep, she can't feel his warmth anymore and she is cold. And her brother–he is gone and his candle isn't burning on the kitchen table.

She doesn't cry much, but she cries enough so that her dreams are just purple night sky and a burnt candle, threads of smoke floating from it's dark wick and away from her.

............

Breakfast at Meg's house is silent. The snow is relaxed now, all of it fallen to the yellow fall grass, and the outside is a glass dome, keeping them inside.

Will has red eyes.

Meg thinks that now she knows what it's like to want to break a window or burn up like the orange embers on the tip of that cigarette.

............

He knows that she won't be back for awhile. After all, her brother is dead and things like that don't just come and go...he should know.

He misses her, even though he wouldn't just come out and say it. His fingers are sore and they ache for her blonde tresses.

He is eating cereal. His mother is talking a blue streak. Blue...eyes. God. She is plaguing his mind and he isn't sure if it's toxic or not.

In between what she is saying about a new occupation with light brown hair and the most unusual habit of something or other, he looks out the window and sighs. He needs a smoke.

His mother stops talking when they hear glass break outside, and chink down onto brick back steps.

His fingers ache. For now, a cigarette and a jacket pocket will do.

............

She needs that warmth that he makes her feel. JJ is gone, and the glass looks heavy on the snow.

**A/N: **Please review! I know it wasn't as well written as the last two chapters. Chapter Four will be up soon. –molly-


	4. FST 4

**A/N:** This is so cool! I never get this many reviews. This story is making me feel special; plus, I am really enjoying writing it. It's so...different for me, because I normally write GG fanfiction, and I think that's what is making it so fun for me because I get to experiment/practice with the characterization of a whole cast of other characters.

**Someone5** – Oh. My. God. I SO totally love you!

**SassyAngel05** – Thanks for being so sweet. I love your reviews.

**Here's** 1) Chapter Four, and 2) Hoping You Enjoy.

............

The church is so very white. It is a white unlike any other she has ever seen – fierce and ferocious, knowing white made only more incensed, more vividly void by the knowledge that there is death in its walls. So she looks up – but the only colors that meet her eyes are dark, empty...dead black, lacking anything real at all. White knows all and black is just empty space.

Dead space.

The memorial is long and her legs ache and the supposed heat from all of the flickering candles and her black pea coat does nothing to thaw her insides. And Will's eyes are red again, and so swollen, and she thinks this is slowly cutting into her heart because he is holding in her sorrow three-fold. And for all of the candles and jackets and frost-bitten, shell-shocked bodies...

There is no heat. And there is no light.

Every time her fingers touch together, every time she is supposed to be praying, she shocks herself, sends shivers jolting through her veins and exploding in her eyes. Every time they sing, Meg Pryor wants to laugh, and every time they pray, she wants to cry. And there are too many little red candles glowing unassumingly underneath Mother Mary tonight. They are all for him, and there are too many. Maybe she is seeing things and her eyes water, staring at the candles for far too long.

She hates herself for having to look at this light to make herself cry.

Outside, the bitter sky and wind wait for them. They file out first, a wavering, slow line...her father and mother, Beth, herself, and then her younger sister and brother. The door opens, creaking, and a knife of winter pounces on her. Her curls are stuck to her cheeks, and whipping at her face, and her fingers fumble with the three buttons. There are three goddamned buttons, and she cannot button them. And the weather is so...hard, and they are still walking, walking away from her as she struggles with those cursed buttons, and the sky is indigo, almost violet. They are opening the car doors and Patty is calling her. Meg still can't button her coat, her fingers turning bluish white. So she cries. Hard.

............

Nobody said anything when she broke the window. She remembers throwing a...something at her bedroom pane, and suddenly it was a mortal rainstorm. The little pieces glittered like water and they sparkled gracefully down into the snow, landing, bits of an angel on the colorless ground.

Of course they know. They had heard that splendid crashing noise, the smashing and the shattering, and perhaps they had seen it falling, falling, falling, ever so slowly and yet so quick, from her windowpane.

Meg wishes she had been punished.

............

It is like a cave in the church this night. It is so very white, and so very empty and open and...dead. Nobody here (is there anyone here?) is alive and he still feels as though he should step quietly. His hands are stuffed inside of his pockets as he makes his way down the center aisle, lined in red.

He doesn't remember ever being one of faith. He fights the impulse to blame that on his mother. He believes in God, of course, but he's never been to church and can't remember the last time he closed his eyes and prayed or wished for something ethereal.

Yet here he is, standing now in front of Mother Mary and a hundred ruby red candles. He knows that she wears a blue cloak and it makes him think of Meg Pryor's blue wool.

He takes a match, which is on fire before he even lights it, and watches as one stroke of red-to-red engulfs the tip of it in a white flame. He picks a candle and quickly finishes the deed.

Chris is not sure what that fire means. Mother Mary says it's hope, but somehow he feels like each breath of smoke and twirling wisp and the very tip of each flame is telling him that time is running out on (something) him and that hope is slowly drifting away.

He's never seen a candle burn down to the bottom though, and he really wishes that they never did.

He watches his candle's wick melt black and dead. _It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul_.

............

She has seen the whole thing and she stands, a part of the molding of the door, watching him in silence. The heat, the dead, still air, the remains of an atmosphere, hang afraid and every particle glows gray and yellow, which she doesn't think is possible. Gray is not glowing and yellow is a hopeful color.

She bites her lip so hard that she does taste blood and she is suddenly crying and the blood is salty and raw on her tongue and so she rubs it along her gums, crying more.

He turns.

She has her gaze fixed on her eyelids (because they are closed and she doesn't want to see him doing that). Her curls are damp because it is raining outside and they hang hopelessly, and he longs to see her eyes. Her cheeks are a ruddy scarlet, and her face is so wet and her body like a broken doll.

Something catches in his throat; the yearning to say something, or to choke on his own realization that he could cry, or something else. The yearning to see those candles melt down to the very bottom of their votives, to see hope finalized. Or perhaps to know that he is in pain. When he sees her, this pallid doll, eyes shut to the world, and feels the glow of candles on his back, he thinks he is watching the end of hope.

It is a very long time before she opens her eyes.

Her steps are slow, her breath stumbling in her throat, her neck quivering and her fingers numb and stiff from the bitter purple sky of the city. (_Bitter_).

She stands in front of Mother Mary like he was doing, and he is sitting on the back of a pew watching her. Lukewarm sunset haze, the only good that comes from burning, envelops her and he sees her drying flaxen locks like fiery skydust tingle in the shadows. A halo, an aura.

She blows. It is a simple, sharp, vicious move and suddenly the dead air in the church is damper and darker and she doesn't have a halo anymore. And her hair is suddenly the shape of no halo and he smells wax everywhere. And she turns.

"Why did you light that candle, Chris?" she screams. It is a wail. He's choking again.

"For you," he states.

She doesn't hesitate to let the tears flow over her face, her porcelain skin, her ruddy scarlet cheeks. _It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul_.

"Doesn't anyone get it?" she screams again. The sound reverberates throughout the very dead air. So dead. So morose. So grieving. So echoing. An echo. "He's dead! He's not coming back! No candle will ever change that!"

So she runs.

He doesn't follow because he can't remember how to use his feet. Never before has he ever seen grief. And now he thinks there is some sort of twisted love here, some distorted and inside-out way of affection, and he thinks that nothing takes time.

She is filling him up and he can't stop the flow and he stands, alone, in the center of that church, so dead and empty and ferociously white. It is dank and it is dark and he doesn't know love, not even love for his mother (that left some time ago) and he isn't sure what it is anymore. This is fast, this downpour of warped blue wool and flaxen curls and soft, warm

Capture-me

lips.

Nothing takes time but she doesn't know that and it makes him start choking on that something that yearns from his throat.

She is hopeless and he is in pain.

_Even more than pain._

**A/N: I don't know...am I going off on some sort of tangent? Help me. Please review and let me know what you think. Hugs and love are part of the deal! Thanks for reading. Chapter 5 up soon. –molly-**


	5. FST 5

A/N: All of these reviews make me want to shout something completely irrelevant like "Hi Ho Silver!" or "Hit The Road, Jack!" Here is Chapter 5 for your reading enjoyment (hopefully).

Thanks to **Nicolle** for betaing this! You were such a great help. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

**Arianna555** – Thank you for your amazing review. It really made my day…week, rather, and I am so glad you like this story.

Everyone with sanity, please go read the above-mentioned reviewers/betaers/friends' stories. Pennames are **Arianna555** and **someone5**.

Thank you all for your feedback. Please keep reviewing!

I do not own John Ruskin or Pablo Picasso, in that order.

…………

Sometimes when night rolls over day and the sky is velvet, she leans against the pillow and closes her eyes. Sometimes she sees white, like snow or cotton or something erased, and sometimes she sees a sleet shadow of what will never be anymore. It used to hurt, this sleet shadow, but now she has adjusted to its tall, sturdy form, the silvery glint of buttons on a uniform coat, the spiderweb outline of a hat. The shadow leans on the doorframe behind her eyelids and watches her as she slips her fingers underneath the quilts.

It is a lukewarm shadow and some nights, it stays longer. Meg knows she will never forget him, or his navy blue coat, stiff and fitted, and now so very gray because the blue is faded.

She is scared of forgetting him, but even more terrified of remembering. And on nights with velvet skies, she is never prepared for what she will see – the white nothingness of her eyelids, or the shadow of her brother, leaning ever so gently on the doorframe. And remembering makes it harder to sleep.

She will settle for in between, and for his lingering shadow in her dreams on dark nights.

…………

The day after Christmas is a leisurely one in a brown-and-white Philadelphia. His black rubber boots throw themselves with ferociously fresh finality into the frosting of snow on the sidewalks. There is bright red tinsel hanging over a lanky tree branch and his eyes catch it as he moves down the street, and it sways with the wind and he remembers that he watched her curtain on Christmas Eve.

The wind picks up and the tinsel twists into a round red curl.

He shoves his fingertips into his pocket for a cigarette and fumbles with the thin white cardboard. Winter is an opportune time to die, he thinks. The leaves have died and the grass has died and color has passed; all is a scale of ink and white canvas and five hundred thousand numb artists' hands shaking to steady the paintbrush. Virgin snow is the only thing pure here.

But as always, she is the purest. And without fail, she makes her way solemnly down the sidewalk, feet making a movement more akin to a drop than a throw, but with just as much finality. And her cheeks are a brilliant geranium, round flowery brightnesses, and her skin is the softest peach, and her blue woolen cap is pulled down tightly over her head and his throat is yearning again.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of a man go together.

He stands, watching her boots drop lazily into the fresh flurrying snow and noticing how when she lifts up her knee, the flaps of her blue woolen coat slide open and he can see more of her legs.

She approaches him slowly, and notices that the space between his fingers is empty and the forceful smell of smoke is lingering, fading away. Chris seems cleaner today, but only to the eye because he is very far from clean.

They walk because the snow makes a nice sound under her feet and he is happy that something is cold but he can't feel it. The air is a sheet of frosted glass, a crumbling wall, and his head throbs. He isn't sure if it's from the cold, or from her knowing existence at his right, or from thinking too hard. Thinking that maybe he can walk through walls, real or not.

She stops underneath a big oak on the sidewalk and stands up on her tiptoes, and he takes note that when she does this and reaches her blue gloved hands up towards a branch, her coat moves farther up her legs.

Her legs look longer today and there is an uneasy feeling rolling around in the pit of his stomach, telling him that if she moves much more her feet will leave the ground.

Meg has already retrieved a piece of dull red tinsel from the branch and continues to walk farther down the sidewalk, her slender back and breezy golden curls asking him to keep walking with her. And even if he has his signals crossed, he keeps up, following her peachy legs and the blue woolen coat, eyes tracking missiles and throat yearning but mouth still a charcoal line.

The trees are bare and black and the snow is white and she is Technicolor wrapped in flaxen gold and powder blue and flushed red. Even as the icy purple wall of night air begins to fall, first lilac, then plum, then something like ink, it is no color like her.

…………

Caring scares him.

But he is Chris Pierce and he is fearless, so he pulls his numbed, white fingers from the rough brown material of his jacket pocket and puts it in the blue wool of her jacket pocket. He feels her breath hitch and his throat mimic it.

They pass the electronics store and the vinyl store and some more oaks,

And then the recruiting office. Gone is the lusty image of angular yellow flames, of smoky jet blue tips shooting billows of smoke into the sky, of crumbling black wood slowly falling, slowly falling the building away. Gone is the image of pride because she stands next to him, eyes wide china plates and lips just separated enough to let the air whistle through; gone is his desire to paint another peace sign.

The desire has been gone since that night under the Christmas tree in her house, the edges of the window glass framed in frost and the buttery yellow light bouncing off of it. Did you do it?, she asked. No, he said. And that was that.

It only hit him with her standing there with china eyes and a piece of dull red tinsel hanging loosely between two fingers, that the desire and the pride and the image of angular yellow flames was a pile of ashes.

When he speaks, Meg is reminded of the dragging sound a Christmas tree makes when it is towed along the pavement of a driveway. Rough but lovely to smell, and little pine pricks scattered everywhere. "You know," he states evenly. It is a dull sound and she thinks his voice might have gone flat.

"Yeah," she replies. This too is even, but there are no pine pricks, only a languid pouring of a sharper note into the frozen air. He starts to feel some of the ice crack.

Her mouth opens, and he watches her bright red lips form a long shape, and she averts her eyes to the curling of a piece of holiday tinsel wrapped around a tree branch. She tries to sound casual.

"I'm sorry," she adds nonchalantly and begins to walk again, letting the piece of dull red tinsel slide from her gloved fingers and ride a sheet of icy air until it catches in a rain gutter.

He watches the piece of tinsel slip between two metal slats and disappear before walking with her again, and he decides not to protest this sudden apology because he knows she will only protest back. And he likes it when she walks with him and lets him put his hand in her pocket.

It is like walking with an oil painting, he decides.

He is only a little bit surprised when she crosses the street to the little white church, lonely and empty and echoing. Because after all, he is Chris Pierce and Chris Pierce is not only Fearless but also Prepared For Anything and A Little Bit All-Knowing.

…………

She is swathed with an old warm feeling that makes her nose sting and consequently, her eyes water, and once again she is burdened by the angering notion that only stinging and dingy air and bright white candles can make her cry for _him._

He pulls his hand from her pocket and she turns to look at him, face unnervingly still and cheeks big flowers and eyes blue china platters. And eyelashes wet black silk and nose a rose from the cold.

"Please?" her mouth is begging him, and he wants to relent by capturing it gently but her blue woolen fingers are pawing at his raw, cold ones and he remembers and weaves their hands together.

They are standing in front of the cluster of votives now, most candles not yet lit but a scattered few (she counts them – three or four, maybe?) blazing triumphantly, small but optimistic little lights.

He watches her movements with painstaking fascination; she drops a quarter with a round panging noise into the collection box and retrieves a stubby, sorry-looking match and strikes it. A crackling noise ensues, small but still there, and he sees her reflection in the tiny flame – golden curls and deep blue eyes and bright cherry lips.

"Did I really blow them out?" she asks, match burning close to the tips of her fingers, eyes darting over the tiny firefly lights of the candles at the feet of Mother Mary. He swallows hard because all of this light and her soft voice and because everywhere is blue and red, and it is becoming harder to keep what yearns down inside.

We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

"No," he whispers hoarsely, trying to make his voice sound artful. But she can see yellow in his brown eyes and his cheekbones are twitching and she thinks of a rough charcoal sketch; the truth hurts, but nobody gained anything from a lie.

She can handle the truth. He knows she knows anyway.

Meg extends her hand with the match towards him but he simply holds her fingers in his own and brings her hand to an unlit votive at Mary's feet. The light is hot and close and he brings the match back once the fire catches the wick, and blows smoke out into the empty, dead air.

Meg inhales wax and a smoky something, and thinks that maybe air can be resuscitated.

…………

It takes all of her control not to kiss him in the church, but once the door closes and they throw/drop their feet back into the mounds of untouched snow (until now), she stops him.

It is the best-broken record ever, and she thinks that maybe she's the only person in the entire world that likes broken, skipping records. This time she kisses him, soundly, on his bottom lip, but it takes but a mere second for him to begin to capture her gently. She ties her blue woolen arms around his neck and runs her fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck, and his hands move from the small of her back to her shoulders, to her flower cheeks, and finally

begin to twist themselves through her flaxen ringlets.

Meg thinks she should hate him for setting that fire but realizes that she helped him set another (however small and holy). And he tells her the truth in an artful sort of way and he has strong shoulders that she likes to hold…and she likes that he makes her yearn.

They stand like that for a while, and he swallows her yearnings and she kisses up his and they both know that this strangled fondness is too fast yet wildly appropriate. So very appropriate that they should kiss while a new candle burns and while old memories linger and while he accepts her apology and she accepts his honesty.

It's an artful honesty, and she's never been one for always telling the truth. He lies, but art is always a lie.


	6. FST 6

A/N: Well this took a freaking long time. I myself am extremely upset that American Dreams won't be returning for another season – it was one of the best shows on network television, in my opinion, and NBC was very ignorant to cancel it. This chapter is in memory of that lovely little show, and for Nicolle, who betaed this, and who is the most forgiving person I have encountered in a rather long time. Thank you so much.

This is **loosely** based upon the 1/9/05 episode.

_Italics_ indicate flashbacks.

…………

She realizes it when she sits on the brick back steps on Saturday morning. She supposes that denial has kept it at a distance for a while, or maybe it's something she hasn't quite yet learned to recognize.

It had started when she woke up and the snow was barely a flurry's memory. Whispers of white ice slid on sheets of air and when she rolled onto her stomach and pressed her nose against the glass, she could almost smell the cold. Round fingernails traced the glass until she could see through it, mouth blowing hot air like silvery smoke. Behind the dotted sky she saw his house, like hers but made of brick.

A red nose, matching dawn lips, downy blonde curls, and checkered pajamas made their way quietly down the stairs and into the kitchen. It was eight o'clock, but Chris Pierce was, among the myriad of sometimes questionable qualities he possessed, Bored. She made tea and leaned against the counter and watched him shoveling snow off of his driveway.

He met her eyes once and she noticed almost too quickly.

…And then she was outside, and it was cold and the flurries were not a memory but a presence, and she was numb from something other than the cold. He pretended not to notice that she sat on the back steps, feathery flaxen curls blowing softly over her cheeks and catching on the bridge of her nose, snowflakes peppering her eyelashes.

She found herself trying to look pretty in tartan plaid flannel, and not blinking her eyes so that the snow would stay on her lids. She remembered reading something once, about a boy who had fallen in love with a girl simply because she had beautiful lips. Meg ran her tongue nervously over her own.

So this is the moment. She sits, and she realizes it. She mouths the word, rolls it around on her tongue, tastes it, and imagines writing it in the snow.

She realizes what was making her numb besides the cold. Her eyes are wet from staying open too long.

…………

"I'm leaving now." His mother stands in the doorway to the bedroom, arms wrapped tightly around a charcoal coat. He closes his eyes and squeezes them tightly and prays to God that when he opens them, she'll be dressed for a dinner with that cop.

No wonder Chris isn't one for religion (which is funny because it always seems to _draw him in_). The coat hangs at her knees and he sees black fishnet stockings and leather pumps. He wonders for a moment where she keeps the bunny ears when she isn't working.

The stare he gives her is blank, a blank canvas. She has nothing to work with.

"I figured." It's blank, too.

His mother fidgets with the tweed belt on her coat. "Well," she replies, a tight smile sewn onto her face with white thread. "I love you, baby." She doesn't bother to hug him.

No reply.

He watches as she leaves the room, black pumps clicking on the white floor. He hears the screen door shut, creaking from the rust. His ears hurt with a gray noise.

Right now, he is Relatively Spiteful, but he makes up for it with Guilty.

…………

Meg can't really remember the conversation. Are you home? she had asked. It was quick, and the phone was melting in her hands. She thinks she can feel the plastic sticking to her fingers, which are flushed violet from the chill, as she trips excitedly down the sidewalk. She feels a rush of stale air in her lungs and her throat stings and her eyes are tearing. It makes her feel better.

She gets the key to the apartment from Roxanne and almost feels it melting too as soon as her hand closes around it. I need to go someplace private with him, she had complained desperately. There's something I need to tell him. I want to make it a special date, Roxanne. What I have to tell him is special. And private.

What are you going to tell him?

I love him, she had said. I love him.

The next conversation is like talking to her palm. The phone really has melted and is lying in a puddle of black plastic on the floor at her feet. She pulls a lost curl behind her ear and stops breathing. Hot air might make her hand melt, too.

He answers on the last ring. He always does.

"Do you want to meet me tonight? It's important." It's quick. Her fingers are slowly beginning to soften. It amazes her how saying something out loud can make the cold air thaw so fast.

"Yeah."

This conversation seems quicker than the previous one. As soon as she hears the dial tone, she scoops the melted phone off the floor and places it onto the cradle. Her hands continue to dissolve and she runs scared up the stairs.

…………

He comes with a pizza box. At first, she's irritated because something hot won't necessarily keep her hands and face and feet solidified and intact. She can feel herself thawing on cue and he grins crookedly, all the while trying to absorb some of that wild ice blue from her eyes. It's too bright and her irises make it difficult to see much else. He pins her as Unaware (of what he feels, maybe).

He sits after her. She kicks her shoes off, trying to stay discreet, but he can't help but notice as she struggles to smooth her skirt out, heels curled up underneath her bottom, that her hands are scalding red.

"Where's the fire?" he asks.

"Don't make jokes, Chris," she snaps, surprised at the ferocity in her own voice.

Chris thinks he noticed that ferocity brewing even on that night when they first kissed in the alley behind the school with white paint on their fingers.

"Thanks for the…" She gestures nonsensically, painting with a color she isn't quite sure of.

The skirt is finally smooth enough for her, and the painting is just _awful_ and suddenly there is nothing for Meg to do with her hands.

But hands are words at the right time of day.

Pizza is an awkward word, an irrelevant detail, a worthless and forgotten concept. She is a color television set. Wild blue everything and ruby lips and those goddamned flaxen ringlets and pink hands running through his hair and dancing down his back.

It's peculiar how quickly time comes and goes, how ephemeral it is, how cursed it is when it's not there anymore.

…………

_It was raining and her feet were shaking from the booming, hollow sounds of the subway underneath her feet. She couldn't tell the difference between the thunder and the train wheels trembling on metal rails. He cupped her face in his hands, trying to feel the pink in her cheeks._

_She pulled her hood up so her hair wouldn't get wet and began to kiss him again. She thought it was really great, kissing in the rain. She could pretend she was kissing him goodbye, that he was leaving for good; she was his quixotic lover, and he was her shady romancer._

_Lover. Lov-er. Lover. She kisses his lips in their exact center, trying harder to envision his departure on a train car. He would ride away from the station, staring with intensely blank longing while she wept silently. He would write letters to her with details from all of his travels – and they would be signed, _Your Lover._ One night, Meg would sit at the station on a bench by the platform, weeping for her runaway love, hoping that the next train would bring him back to Philadelphia. And then, there he would be…standing in front of her in the pouring rain, _

_just like he was now._

_Meg laughed contentedly against Chris' mouth._

"_Lover," she whispered in between breaths while he kissed her wet face._

_Naïveté was as ephemeral as time in Philadelphia._

…………

White easel. Crisp, smooth, pure.

Blue, red, yellow – primary colors and primary paints. Vivid red. Bright deep blue. Yellow everywhere.

The Liberty Bell is not far from here. Vietnam is thousands of miles away. Between his arm and her stomach is a total of three and a half inches.

He is watching her sleep, because he thinks that if she wakes up and locks eyes with him, she will find him romantic and all of that blue will bloom. He can't help but be one clichéd sack of beating heart right now. Somehow all of that black ink has been used up on the night sky and that one lone candlewick is making his blood course and her face glow.

In the last passing hours, he has thought often of God and of his hands, and her hands, and His hands.

Not too much later, Meg's eyes open and her eyes sear through his, burning him in an almost pleasant sort of way, like the silky, thick feeling of a sunburn before the pain sets in. A flash of that thin white paint on the brick wall on a dark night leaps across one of Chris' synapses. She conjures.

"I forgot to tell you before," she whispers, making the faintest sort of watercolor sound.

"Hm?" he means to say, but it doesn't come out because she sort of drains the noise from him and makes him shift closer, blank white sheets crinkling softly.

"I love you, Chris."

The flickering shadow of the small candle flame floats on his face and she can't help but smile at his silence. He is what he is, she thinks briefly. I love black curls.

He reaches a hand out, tentatively, touches the hollow between her collarbone and throat. "I love you," he whispers back.

And then he kisses her, and she moves closer, and he sees red and blue and yellow everywhere and she can taste a warm sort of white smoke in his mouth.

_Let me finger-paint you._


End file.
